Saturday, August 07, 2010

"Montgomery County police arrest 22-year-old on charges of vandalizing synagogue" - horrible, isn't it? You have to read past the headline and a number of paragraphs on Nazi tattoos before you reach the usual lede: "Police said Baron was adopted by Jewish parents."

"Mysterious and possibly nefarious trading algorithms are operating every minute of every day in the nation's stock exchanges.

What they do doesn't show up in Google Finance, let alone in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. No one really knows how they operate or why. But over the past few weeks, Nanex, a data services firm has dragged some of the odder algorithm specimens into the light.

The trading bots visualized in the stock charts in this story aren't doing anything that could be construed to help the market. Unknown entities for unknown reasons are sending thousands of orders a second through the electronic stock exchanges with no intent to actually trade. Often, the buy or sell prices that they are offering are so far from the market price that there's no way they'd ever be part of a trade. The bots sketch out odd patterns with their orders, leaving patterns in the data that are largely invisible to market participants

In fact, it's hard to figure out exactly what they're up to or gauge their impact. Are they doing something illicit? If so, what? Or do the patterns emerge spontaneously, a kind of mechanical accident? If so, why? No matter what the answers to these questions turn out to be, we're witnessing a market phenomenon that is not easily explained. And it's really bizarre."

It is a key sign of conspiracy when people who should know what is going on pronounce themselves mystified.

In a society which worships the 'victim', this kind of thing is inevitable: "Woman faked cancer to raise money" Also here.

"Montgomery County police arrest 22-year-old on charges of vandalizing synagogue" - horrible, isn't it? You have to read past the headline and a number of paragraphs on Nazi tattoos before you reach the usual lede: "Police said Baron was adopted by Jewish parents."

"Mysterious and possibly nefarious trading algorithms are operating every minute of every day in the nation's stock exchanges.

What they do doesn't show up in Google Finance, let alone in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. No one really knows how they operate or why. But over the past few weeks, Nanex, a data services firm has dragged some of the odder algorithm specimens into the light.

The trading bots visualized in the stock charts in this story aren't doing anything that could be construed to help the market. Unknown entities for unknown reasons are sending thousands of orders a second through the electronic stock exchanges with no intent to actually trade. Often, the buy or sell prices that they are offering are so far from the market price that there's no way they'd ever be part of a trade. The bots sketch out odd patterns with their orders, leaving patterns in the data that are largely invisible to market participants

In fact, it's hard to figure out exactly what they're up to or gauge their impact. Are they doing something illicit? If so, what? Or do the patterns emerge spontaneously, a kind of mechanical accident? If so, why? No matter what the answers to these questions turn out to be, we're witnessing a market phenomenon that is not easily explained. And it's really bizarre."

It is a key sign of conspiracy when people who should know what is going on pronounce themselves mystified.

In a society which worships the 'victim', this kind of thing is inevitable: "Woman faked cancer to raise money" Also here.